Sascha Kaidanovsky as Stalker
The Stalker in the opening scene of Part Two: “Let everything that’s been planned come true. Let them believe. And let them have a laugh at their passions. Because what they call passion actually is not some emotional energy, but just the friction between their souls and the outside world. And most important, let them believe in themselves. Let them be helpless like children, because weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it’s tender and pliant. But when it’s dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death’s companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.”
- The film was released in 1979, the time of the great religious reawakening in Moscow (you are reading one of the victims of that very wave). Stalker is the most spiritual of Tarkovsky’s films. According to Eduard Artemyev, who wrote most musical scores for Tarkovsky, Andrei was intensely interested in Zen buddhism (hence the quote above).
- The film was shot twice, the entire year of work on the first version of the film was destroyed because of the experimental Kodak film.
- The film was shot in Estonia next to a toxic chemical plant. Many people who worked on the film, including Tarkovsky himself, his closets friend Anatoli Solonitsyn (who played the Writer) and his wife Larisa died from bronchial cancer during the next decade.
Anatoli Solonitsyn as the Writer in Stalker: “A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he’s worth something. And if I know for sure that I’m a genius? Why write then? What the hell for?”
The film concludes with the 1836 Fyodor Tyutchev’s poem “The Dull Flame Of Desire”:
Люблю глаза твои, мой друг,
С игрой их пламенно-чудесной,
Когда их приподымешь вдруг
И, словно молнией небесной,
Окинешь бегло целый круг…
Но есть сильней очарованья:
Глаза, потупленные ниц
В минуты страстного лобзанья,
И сквозь опущенных ресниц
Угрюмый, тусклый огнь желанья
-Фёдор Тютчев
I love your eyes, my friend
Their splendid sparkling fire
When suddenly you raise them so
To cast a swift embracing glance
Like lightning flashing in the sky
But there is a charm that is greater still
When my love’s eyes are lowered
When all is fired by passion’s kiss
And through the downcast lashes
I see the dull flame of desire.
The Writer: “My conscience wants vegetarianism to win over the world. And my subconscious is yearning for a piece of juicy meat. But what do I want?”